March 23, 2006
(Annunciation of Our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary/Diocese of West Missouri Acolyte Festival)

Impossible Things

by The Rev. Carol Sanford, Curate

Isaiah 7:10-14  •  Hebrews 10:5-10  •  Psalm 40:1-11 or 40:5-10 or Canticle 3 or 15
•  Luke 1:26-38 
(From The Lectionary Page)

It’s great to see so many people here on a Saturday afternoon. Some people might have a hard time believing that anyone would show up at church on a Saturday. But today is a day of impossible things. Today is the day we celebrate the Annunciation of Our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Annunciation means “announcement.” This is the day when we hear about the Archangel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she has been chosen by God to give birth to God’s son, Jesus. This story seems impossible on several counts. It has an angel showing up, a young woman who has never been with a man expecting a child, and the surprising idea that God would somehow become human.

Are we really supposed to believe these impossible things?

In talking to Alice in Wonderland, the White Queen says that believing impossible things takes practice. I think she has a good point. Practice has certainly has worked for me.

I would like to tell you the story of how I started to believe impossible things. It began with two puppies named Harley and Millie. The year before we got Harley and Millie had been kind of rough. Our fourteen year old dog had died, then I got sick and then a good friend was killed in a car accident, and some other people we knew died that year, too. It seemed like the life had gone out of everything.

Right in the middle of all of this, our friend Jane called and that said she had an emergency and asked if we could help. The emergency turned out to be a tiny, funny- looking puppy who was in desperate need of a home. We didn’t want a puppy; we were still too sad about everything that had happened. But here sat this puppy, all skinny and with his hair sticking out and with nowhere else to go. We said yes, and Harley came home, and soon we got Millie to keep him company.

Now here’s the miracle part. We started watching Harley and Millie. When we got them, they were about 8 inches long each. A week or so later, they were a little longer. There was nothing to explain this! Every day, we would set out a bowl of water and a bowl of puppy chow, and every day they would get a little bigger. This was clearly impossible. Puppy chow was turning into puppies right under our noses.

Of course, it wasn’t just the puppy chow; there was the water and the person who set out the bowls and then we had to add exercise and play and treats and love to make healthy growing puppies. We participated by providing what they needed, and we did understand a bit about science, but nothing other than a mystery of God could really explain how all those elements added up to puppy tails being a little bit longer every day.

Having once seen the impossible in puppy chow and puppies, it became easier to see it everywhere.

For example, we all know that dirt and water and sun and seeds turn into oranges, but when you think abut it, it’s really strange. When you add to that that we live hundreds of miles away from where oranges grow and that someone has to clear the land and plant the trees and pick the oranges and make the boxes they travel in and mine the metal to make the truck that somebody has to drive to get them here, and then someone had to build the grocery store and set up the display case and make the paper that made the carton the juice comes in, and God had to create everything in the first place and… well, as you can see, it goes on and on, and getting every single element to line up so that we can have a glass of orange juice is clearly impossible!

We live so close to amazing things that we no longer notice them, and then we are baffled when we talk about impossible things like The Annunciation.

When we talked about The Annunciation in our pre-confirmation class here at the cathedral, we tried to imagine what it would be like to be Mary. Not one of us thought that a young girl in Mary’s circumstances, hearing what Gabriel had to say, would respond “let it be with me according to your word.” We thought the more likely response would be, “No way! That’s impossible!”

It’s not as if God hadn’t been around before. God had called Abraham, brought the Israelites out of slavery, given them a code to live by, and sustained them in the wilderness. It’s not that God hadn’t been there; but now God was going to be visible, here, now, one of us! This impossible thing was going to happen, but it wasn’t going to happen without human help. For Jesus to become God’s Word made flesh, it would take someone to be his mother. Mary was presented with this impossible idea, and she said “yes.”

If you are here today, you have said “yes” to God. You are a parent willing to drive a child here to the Acolyte Festival, or a worshipper coming to celebrate the Annunciation of our Lord, or you are an acolyte or trainer of acolytes, or you are a clergy person or a lay leader. Perhaps some of you initially said “yes” to being here today when you really wanted to say “no,” but even so you are serving God’s people and helping them to say “yes,” too.

Jesus isn’t walking among us in the same way as he did 2,000 years ago. Today, Jesus is walking with us in the Holy Spirit, in our Scriptures, in our care for one another, and in the bread and wine at our table. We who participate in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist and the reading of Scripture and the saying of prayers are saying yes to God just as Mary did. We are giving up our time, our plans and sometimes our comfort so that God may be present in a visible, tangible way.

It is no small thing that happens here. It is no small work that we do. Whether your part in that work is praying in the pews, lighting a candle, carrying a cross, singing in the choir, saying the mass, or driving the car to get here, you have said yes to God.

There are no small roles in God’s world. We are dealing with the miraculous; with the impossible. We are here to make God visible, and our being here shows that God exists, for why else would we keep showing up, day after day, month after month, year after year, millennium after millennium?

So: we come together on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. Somebody sets out the linens and someone carries a candle and somebody holds a cross. Someone plays some music and someone reads some words, and other people listen and sing. Everybody either prays or acts like they’re praying, and we all stand up and sit down. A table is set with some bread and some wine and some words are said and we all come up and have some, and then we sing and maybe talk to each other for awhile, and then we leave.

And then?

And then impossible things begin to happen. Hungry people are fed from food pantries and soup kitchens, frightened children are given dolls to love, rejected people are welcomed, sick people are visited, lonely people are invited to dinner, soldiers and students and prisoners who are feeling homesick receive letters telling them that they are missed and loved, and people are healed.

A young girl 2,000 years ago may have been thinking No Way, That’s impossible, but she said Yes. Jesus may have asked, If it be possible, let this cup pass from me, but he stayed around for the crucifixion that there might be resurrection. Many of us might have thought that a Saturday afternoon is a perfect time to watch TV, and we might think that Sunday morning is a great day to sleep in, but we show up anyway.

We show up and do our various jobs, and then, somehow, the light of God streams forth into the world. We not only believe the impossible, we live it.